Some ideas/concepts/notions, like "red," just are what they are. There is no way that red-in-itself might've been blue, or a sound, or so on. It's just red. But we have souls, which might be thought of like complete ideas about our living natures. Now, let's suppose that the individual concepts of each individual person, as such, could be different without being applied to anything in the living world. Like an abstract A-or-B.
So let's suppose that there are an infinite number of possible concepts of possible people. Unless God decides to make every possible person real, He will only choose some people to exist. Also, He doesn't have to choose to make a person exist only if that person has, in their abstract concept of their soul, decided to accept or reject Christ. He creates whom He creates in order to tell His story, which is beyond our comprehension. If accepting or rejecting Christ is a choice encoded into our souls in an abstract realm of possibility, God will create some people who choose to accept Christ. This does not mean that their choice was real until God created them in this world. It was just an abstract possibility. God did not "finalize" whether A-or-B "inside of" the concept of the person, but He did decide whether this abstraction ever meant anything in the real world.
Now, this picture of things explains the sense of the word "predestination." I think it's worth noting that the word used is not usually given as "destined" or "ordained" but "predestined" and "foreordained." It's similar to God making the decision for us, but not identical to it. God decides which choices are actual. Our free will is a power involving pure possibilities, so the form of the power would be different from the power of actualized creation as such. To "do" otherwise would be like making red itself into blue itself, a violation of the concept of the thing in question.
People might often think that they make choices "day to day," so my picture of things conflicts with a commonplace thought about free will as such. On the other hand, there's a study involving some guy named Libet or something, where evidence was found that our experience of making choices takes place after the choice has already been made (although this interpretation of the evidence makes the act of free choice an event inside of normal physical time, which I would disagree with).
TL;DR/alternative version: why is it not possible to believe that we choose to accept or reject grace, as well as that God elects us to grace? Isn't it possible that the power of free will is different enough from the power of creation unto election, that claims about what is caused by one are not the same kind of claims as those about what is caused by the other? Let us say that there is event-to-event cause-and-effect, which is what we think possibly threatens "free will." Then there is the "power to do otherwise," for things to be other than they end up being, which might affect the whole chain of cause-and-effect without being a (normal) part of it. Then there is an even more mysterious level of cause-and-effect where God predestines things. It is possible for things to be otherwise than God has predestined them to be, and it is not God alone Who makes this "otherwise" possible as such; but by now we are in a realm of abstractions and possibilities that somehow believing that God is able to be controlled or influenced by our free will, in this way, is to miss the point of these different levels of cause-and-effect.
So let's suppose that there are an infinite number of possible concepts of possible people. Unless God decides to make every possible person real, He will only choose some people to exist. Also, He doesn't have to choose to make a person exist only if that person has, in their abstract concept of their soul, decided to accept or reject Christ. He creates whom He creates in order to tell His story, which is beyond our comprehension. If accepting or rejecting Christ is a choice encoded into our souls in an abstract realm of possibility, God will create some people who choose to accept Christ. This does not mean that their choice was real until God created them in this world. It was just an abstract possibility. God did not "finalize" whether A-or-B "inside of" the concept of the person, but He did decide whether this abstraction ever meant anything in the real world.
Now, this picture of things explains the sense of the word "predestination." I think it's worth noting that the word used is not usually given as "destined" or "ordained" but "predestined" and "foreordained." It's similar to God making the decision for us, but not identical to it. God decides which choices are actual. Our free will is a power involving pure possibilities, so the form of the power would be different from the power of actualized creation as such. To "do" otherwise would be like making red itself into blue itself, a violation of the concept of the thing in question.
People might often think that they make choices "day to day," so my picture of things conflicts with a commonplace thought about free will as such. On the other hand, there's a study involving some guy named Libet or something, where evidence was found that our experience of making choices takes place after the choice has already been made (although this interpretation of the evidence makes the act of free choice an event inside of normal physical time, which I would disagree with).
TL;DR/alternative version: why is it not possible to believe that we choose to accept or reject grace, as well as that God elects us to grace? Isn't it possible that the power of free will is different enough from the power of creation unto election, that claims about what is caused by one are not the same kind of claims as those about what is caused by the other? Let us say that there is event-to-event cause-and-effect, which is what we think possibly threatens "free will." Then there is the "power to do otherwise," for things to be other than they end up being, which might affect the whole chain of cause-and-effect without being a (normal) part of it. Then there is an even more mysterious level of cause-and-effect where God predestines things. It is possible for things to be otherwise than God has predestined them to be, and it is not God alone Who makes this "otherwise" possible as such; but by now we are in a realm of abstractions and possibilities that somehow believing that God is able to be controlled or influenced by our free will, in this way, is to miss the point of these different levels of cause-and-effect.
